The government was accused of performing a u-turn over its transport policy yesterday after announcing a £7bn road building package despite coming to power by pledging a moratorium on road building.
The Conservatives seized on the former transport secretary John Prescott's insistence that "you can't build your way out of congestion", and called on him to apologise for taking the government down a "shocking blind alley" by repeatedly refusing to countenance road building and scorning "the needs of motorists and busineses".
But, with business leaders applauding the measures and motoring groups calling on the government to be more radical, the current transport secretary, Alistair Darling, appealed to environmentalists by ruling out environmentally-contentious schemes and suggesting a commitment to road charging - which will now be explored in a feasibility study.
"We can't build our way out of all the pressures we face" he told MPs. "Road pricing would be a radically different approach. But it could have huge potential to reduce congestion and allow faster, more reliable journeys."
Outlining the much trailed road building measures, Mr Darling confirmed the M25 orbital around London would be widened from three lanes to four for much of its 120-mile length, at a cost of £1.7bn.
A £1.2bn package of improvements to the M1, M18, M62 and the A1/A1(M) in Yorkshire will go ahead, together with a widening to four lanes of the M1 between the M25 and Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, at a cost of £623m. Improvements would also be carried out on the M60 around north and west Manchester, but a bypass around Arundel in West Sussex, and a flyover near Chichester and tunnel at Worthing, were rejected on environmental grounds. So were bypasses at Stourbridge and Wolverhampton.
With the aim of improving traffic management measures, a pilot project, under which cars on the M42 will be allowed to use the hard shoulder at peak times, was also announced - with potential schemes following in the Thames Valley, parts of the M60 in Manchester, and the M1, M62 and M18 in Yorkshire.
On the railways, new services between Ashford and Brighton, London and Leeds via Nottingham, and the possibility of reopening the Bedford to Oxford route, are being examined.
Yesterday's package comes seven months after Mr Darling took up plans shelved by his predecessor and announced a £3bn package to widen some of Britain's busiest motorways, including parts of the M1 and M6. But it is the suggestion that increased road charging could be introduced that will prove the most contentious.
The shadow transport secretary, Tim Collins, denounced this as "a particularly regressive and vicious stealth tax", while the AA said the government would have to couple it with cuts in fuel duty to sweeten the pill.
Plans to charge lorries after tracking them and their use of roads through satellite technology are planned for 2006, and the government intends to examine whether this could be extended to all the 26m cars in Britain.
Yesterday's programme is in stark contrast to Labour's policy on transport since 1997, when it brought in a moratorium on road building. But officials stressed no new roads had been built under Labour, with this package merely expanding existing roads.
Yesterday the Freight Transport Association and the AA insisted the government had been wrong to announce the moratorium. The CBI said congestion undermined British competitiveness, and it was vital to get on with the announced schemes.
